Daniel Weltlinger Quartet

 

SZOLNOK

(DMG)

9/10

This is the one he’s been working towards. This is the one where the violin sound flows from the speakers like thickened cream; where the programmatic ideas and the purely musical ones are in complete accord. Daniel Weltlinger’s profound fascination with the love, peregrinations, tribulations and grief of his family is here realised via tracing the history of the violin he plays, which previously belonged to his grandfather. The album begins with the 1902 birth of his grandfather in Szolnok, Hungary, and then follows his journey; follows his playing of the beloved violin that later was to entrance the young Daniel so completely.

Weltlinger and his German quartet (pianist Uri Gincel, bassist Paul Kleber and drummer Mathias Rupping) skip so lightly between idioms that, whether landing on a waltz rooted in the European tradition or a swing jazz tune, they achieve a miraculous weightlessness. This quality has always been implicit in Weltlinger’s playing, but now he has a band that doesn’t crowd around the violin too much, and the recording is so exquisite that his sumptuous sound will carry you off into the story’s many evocative melodies and swelling improvisations.